When you analyse or create media, what are you aware of?
The social and cultural world behind media texts.
Power relations in representation
Your own perspective, assumptions, and positionality.
Being consciousmeans being critical and reflexive, aware of how meaning is made and how we’re involved in that process.
When you watch something, how do you decidewhat’s important to notice?
Avengers (2012) by Joss Whedon
Starcraft II (2010) by Blizzard
What we notice isn’t neutral!It’s shaped by our assumptions, education, and cultural position.
What is theory?
Which theory?
Medium Theory
Agenda-Setting Theory
Usesand GratificationsTheory
CultivationTheory
Encoding/Decoding Model
Hegemonyand IdeologyTheory
Marxist Theory
Feminist Media Theory
Cultural Studies
AlgorithmicMedia Theory
Queer Theory
PostcolonialMedia Theory
Feminist Theory
How does the film portray female agency?
Diana framed through a male gaze?
she given her own subjectivity?
Does the film challenge traditional gender roles or reproduce them under the surface of empowerment?
Laura Mulvey – Gaze Theory
a film, male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man.
1975
If this image is highlighted with specific conventions such as slow motion, deliberate camera movements and cut aways…
Bechdel-Wallace Test
The requirements of the Mako Mori test are that a film or television show has at least one female character and that this character has an independent plot arc and that the character or her arc does not simply exist to support a male character's plot arc.
MAKO MORI TEST
Sexy Lamp Test
Coined by comics writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, it is used to evaluate the relevance and depth of female characters in a narrative.
Marxist Theory
Karl Marx
German political philosopher and economist
the founder of modern communism.
With Friedrich Engels, they rolled the Communist Manifesto and launched it into a series of books, most notably the three volume, Das Kapital.
Their method is the dialectical analysis.
Critical Theory
Owned by those in control in order to make money
Repeats the same idea and values regardless of their form
Culture Industry
Theodor Adorno
Cultural Studies
to decode the world around us
How do meanings circulate in society?
Who gets to define what is “normal,” “valuable,” or “deviant”?
How might different audiences interpret this clip?
there a preferred meaning encoded by producers?
What negotiated or oppositional readings might exist?
Cultural Studies is not about defending culture, but “intervening in the politics of culture.”
Stuart Hall
Some take a dominant reading (enjoying the world of refinement and duty).
Others a negotiated reading (loving the drama while recognising its class politics).
Others an oppositional reading (seeing it as a soft glorification of inequality).
What is methodology?
If theory is how we see, methodology is how we go about finding out.
Methodology connects theoretical thinking with practical doing.
Imagine I’m interested in female representation in games.
theory might be feminist.
methodology could be visual or discourse analysis.
method would be to collect a set of game characters and analyse how women are shown.
practitioner might explore empathy in game design.Their methodology could be practice-based research, using prototypes and reflection as data.
Reflective Journaling
Game Art student keeps a journal while designing a character for a speculative game.
They document their inspirations, aesthetic choices, and reactions to feedback.
When they change the character’s posture or costume, they note why: “I realised I was reinforcing gender stereotypes and adjusted her design.”
Over time, the journal becomes data showing how awareness and decision-making evolved.
How it functions methodologically:
systematic record of thoughts, feelings, decisions, and discoveries throughout a creative or research process.It’s both descriptive (what happened) and analytical (why it matters).
Interviews
Game Design student wants to explore how players experience moral choice in narrative games.
They conduct interviews with 8–10 players about moments of guilt, empathy, or uncertainty in Detroit: Become Human.
They analyse transcripts using thematic analysis, identifying recurring ideas (e.g., responsibility, agency, consequence).
The focus is on interpretation — understanding meaning, not measuring behaviour.
What it reveals:→ The why and how behind people’s experiences, perceptions, and values.
Surveys and questionnaires
Game Development student wants to test whether cooperative play increases player engagement.
They design an online survey measuring enjoyment (Likert scale) among 200 players who played solo or co-op.
They calculate averages and correlations to compare responses.
The results provide measurable evidence to support or question design decisions.
What it reveals:→ Patterns and trends in behaviour, preferences, or performance — the what and how much.
Autoethnography
A research method that uses the researcher’s own lived experience as data to explore wider cultural, social, or theoretical issues.
Example: A Game Animation student is researching how players emotionally identify with avatars.Instead of conducting external interviews, they turn the lens inward and use their own gaming experience as data.
Seminar activity: Seeing through different theories
ll watch a short Nintendo Switch ad: “Find New Beginnings.”
What gaze (Laura Mulvey’s male gaze) might be operating here?
Does the clip reinforce or subvert gender stereotypes?
Lens 2: Marxist Theory
What’s being sold and what ideology supports that sale?
What class values or hierarchies are visible?
How does the clip relate to consumerism, labour, or capitalist desire?
Who benefits from this message?
Lens 3: Cultural Studies
How might different audiences interpret this clip?
there a preferred meaning encoded by producers?
What negotiated or oppositional readings might exist?
How do cultural backgrounds shape reception?
Unpack together
How did each lens change what we noticed?
What did each theory make visible and what did it make invisible?
Bibliography
Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.”In Culture, Media, Language, editedbyStuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, 117–127. London: Hutchinson, 1980.
Hall, Stuart. “The Work of Representation.” In Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall, 13–74. London: Sage, 1997.
Berger, Arthur Asa. Media and Communication Research Methods: An Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2019.
Bechdel, Alison. Dykes to Watch Out For. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1986.
Young, Melissa. “From Bechdel to Mako Mori: Evolving Feminist Measures of Female Representation.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 45, no. 3 (2017): 150–162.
